


where i fall is where i land

by sssammich



Series: where i fall is where i land [1]
Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Angst, Complete, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-17
Updated: 2010-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-20 19:06:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sssammich/pseuds/sssammich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They just can't be together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	where i fall is where i land

Dianna is awake, but her eyes are closed. She’s unable to go to back to sleep but she doesn’t get up or change from her curled position in her bed, with her back to the door, aside from pulling herself to become a smaller ball, hugging her pillow tightly.  She refuses to open her eyes, desperate to keep pretending ignorance.

She can feel Lea staring at her from beside the bed but she doesn’t have the heart to turn around and look at her in the eyes. She doesn’t have the heart to say goodbye. She doesn’t have the luxury of a heart not breaking, so she opts to just keep on pretending.

There’s a dip on the bed somewhere behind her but Dianna dares not to move a single muscle, trying her hardest to keep her breathing even. There’s a hand on her arm that settles there, the warmth of Lea’s hand smolders her skin and it’s all Dianna can do to swat it away and hold it there firmly at the same time.

Lea leans and slowly takes the hair out of Dianna’s face. Lea’s soft lips hover just millimeters above Dianna’s face. She stays there and Dianna’s convinced that she’s so close to giving herself away.

I’m sorry, Di,” Lea says before planting a kiss on her cheek.

She pulls herself back up and sighs before getting off the bed and leaving the room. Dianna focuses intently on the sounds Lea makes and only when she hears the front door close that she tries to let out the breath she’s been holding the entire time. Instead of just air, it’s a painful stinging sob that comes out. She shuts her eyes even tighter and holds on.

Lea has left her completely alone in the apartment. She can feel the ache of Lea’s absence permeate throughout her entire room and she knows that that feeling is going to extend to the rest of the apartment for a long time.

She opens her eyes and she feels the hot tears slide past her nose and down to the pillow. The tears surprise her because she thought she kept it at bay. It’s another ten minutes after this that she gets out of bed even with her valiant efforts not to think or do or say anything today.  

Dianna’s slumped against the kitchen counter with her arms folded, staring at the picture on the refrigerator. It’s a photo of the two of them, wide smiles, on the day Lea moved in. Lea’s smile was so big and so happy that even now, Dianna can’t help but reluctantly give in to the small quirk of her lips even if she feels like there’s nothing to smile about. She slowly plucks the picture from the refrigerator, her limbs feeling heavy while doing so. She yanks the picture in half, tearing their smiling faces apart before throwing it down and placing it beside a powder blue note beside her on the counter with her name on it written in Lea’s loopy scrawl.

*

It’s been a week since Lea’s moved out of their once shared apartment. It feels far too different to feel like she lives there. It becomes an unrecognizable space. In the living room sits her coffee table, but it’s just a purposeless table without Lea’s collection of magazines carelessly stacked on it. The painting Lea’s mother made for the apartment used to make the dining room feel warm and inviting, but without it, the wall has become much too stark and bare for Dianna’s liking.

At one point during the week, after an exhausting day at work, she opens the door and panics thinking someone robbed her apartment.

She rolls her eyes at herself for thinking how fucking cliché this has become, thinking that she doesn’t feel at home in her own apartment anymore. But she can’t help it. Dianna thinks it shouldn’t affect her this much, but it does.

A part of her hopes that Lea’s feeling the same exact heartache that she has right now. But the other part of her hopes that Lea never feels like she does because the hurt in her chest feels like shit. 

Chris calls her that day, asking how she is and they talk a little before it registers in her brain that he’s on his way. She realizes how lonely she’s gotten in just the last week and feels relief to find some company.

He arrives thirty minutes after they end their call. Once he gets to the apartment, she opens the door to him and it doesn’t take any time at all when he opens his arms for her. She walks willfully towards him and accepts his proffered embrace.

“Let me see it,” he says. Dianna looks at him before sliding the powder blue note in his direction, her right hand staying in the spot where she left the note. He takes the paper from under her hand and opens it up, taking his time to read the words. His face doesn’t show any reaction to the letter, taking everything Lea wrote to Dianna. Instead, he puts the letter back down and takes Dianna’s hand from the table in both of his.

She’s really close to just crying because the pain in her throat is starting to get to her, but she’s trying to be strong and thinking of ways not to cry anymore. She’s looking at his concerned face and she knows what he’s going to ask her. So she tries and pulls herself together, breathes in deeply before speaking.

“It happened two weeks ago. We were just sitting on the couch talking about vacation plans before we started filming the second season when it happened. I kissed her and she kissed me.” Chris squeezes her hand in his and waits patiently for her to continue when she could barely get the words out.

“It’s been building up to that moment ever since she moved in with me. I know she’s been with Cory this entire time, but I haven’t been able to help how I feel, even then. I know there’s something in her that returns those feelings for me and sometimes I see it. But she gets so hard to read sometimes, you know? Like, she gives this illusion of being transparent and easy to read, but she might as well be written in a language I can’t understand.”

He nods. “What happened after you two kissed?”

She’s silent as she stares off into space, not meeting Chris’s gaze.

“That was it,” she says slowly, her voice a coarse whisper. “She pulled back, held my face and apologized. I thought she was gonna tell me that maybe we could give this a try or tell me that she feels the same way. But all she told me was that  _she can’t_.” Dianna takes her hand away from Chris’s and wipes at her eyes, trying to stop any more tears from running free.

But the tears keep falling down her face and she’s shaking her head as she tries to control what little dignity she still has as she rubs away the tears with her hands. “She just-she can’t and she’s not…she can’t-” Dianna’s crying now and she keeps wiping away because this  _hurts_.

“Di, what can’t she do?”

“I don’t know.” Dianna slumps after a helpless shrug, her face tear stricken. “Love me, I guess.”

Chris shakes his head sadly, gets up from his chair and pulls the girl into a hug as she crumbles into a heap of sobbing mess.

*

They’re back for filming the second season.

She’s on the set two hours earlier than scheduled after giving up on any attempts of sleeping the night before. She sits in her trailer and looks over her script for about an hour when the door opens and Lea hesitantly steps in upon seeing her.

“I can come back later if you want to be alone for a while. I mean-”

“No. This is your trailer, too.”

Lea nods, her lips in a thin line as she slowly closes the door.

The tension fills the room up quickly, leaving Dianna feel awkward on the couch with her script already forgotten. She can see that it’s also affecting Lea as the other girl rummages through everything in their shared trailer so as not to look at Dianna.

Lea eventually takes her own script out of her bag and sits in the farthest corner of the trailer, pretending to be comfortable.

They sit in this painfully awkward silence that Dianna entertains the idea of just conceding defeat, getting up and heading towards the door. But she was here first and she’s not going to give Lea the satisfaction.

Out of the corner of her eye, she’s been watching Lea look back and forth between her and the script in her hands. It’s not making her feel any better about the situation and she looks at her, her eyebrows raised, just as Lea looks up at her again. Lea blushes, embarrassed at being caught, but doesn’t move her gaze.

“What?” she asks a lot snappier than she had intended, but she’s not taking it back. Dianna swears she saw the other girl flinch and it gives her a little satisfaction.

“I was just-” she pauses before continuing. “How’s, um, how are you?”

Dianna takes a second to reply, “Fine. I’m fine.” Lea nods. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, too.”

“How’s the new apartment?”

“Small, but it’s nice.”

They’re back to their silence.

Before Dianna can register in her head what she’s saying, the words come stumbling out of her mouth.

“What was it that you couldn’t do? Love me?” Dianna’s voice is soft and broken that she can barely hear herself. But by the look on Lea’s face, she knows she heard her. The thick air of painful silence hangs over the two of them. Dianna shuts her eyes tightly, willing herself not to shed a single fucking tear again. She makes a move to get up, eyes still closed, when a soft warm hand holds her in place.

She can feel Lea keep hold of her wrist as she, too, gets up and stands in front of her.

“Open your eyes, Di.”

Dianna clenches her jaws, but keeps her eyes closed.

“Please.”

Slowly, her long lashes flutter open and she’s staring down on a glassy brown eyes that are fighting their own tears from falling.

Lea’s naturally loud, booming voice has diminished into a barely audible whisper as she speaks to her.

“Loving you was never the problem. I have loved you for as long as I can remember. I don’t know when it happened, but all I know is, I woke up one day and was pretty certain that I loved you. That I love you.”

“Then why-” Dianna starts to protest but Lea cuts her off.

“I can’t be with you when I know that this will never last.”

“How do you know? You’ve never tried.”

“We want different things with our lives. There are just so many things that are against us. It can’t possibly work. And I’m with Cory. I can’t break his heart.”

Dianna scoffs. “So you’ll just break mine? And yours, for that matter?”

“Don’t make this hard.”

She shakes her head and breaks loose from Lea’s grasp. “What are you so afraid of? That this might actually work between us?”

“I don’t want to break your heart.”

“A little too late for that, don’t you think?!”

“Di,” Lea starts, trying to get a hold of her as Dianna tries to walk towards the door.

“No. No, you don’t get to-”

Before she finishes what she wants to say, Lea cuts her off by kissing her. Dianna doesn’t hesitate to kiss back, wrapping both of her hands around Lea and deepening the kiss as she moves her hand to get tangled in Lea’s hair.

The kiss doesn’t last long, though, as they break apart for air. She leans her head against Lea’s temple as the two hold onto each other for some time.

“This is it, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t wait for an answer as she pulls herself together enough to step away from Lea. She picks her script from the floor and silently leaves the trailer, not once glancing back.

*

For the rest of the season, the two of them play their parts on screen and off. Dianna tells Chris that she’s finally starting to move on even when she knows it’s not true. Lea and Cory continue to be together, only seeming to get stronger with each day.

One day, Lea and Dianna are sitting beside each other by the crafts table watching everyone run around to find three sets of missing crutches.

“Hey,” Lea says as she picks up a cracker from the platter next to her.

“Hi.”

“Ten bucks says that Kevin and Mark hid the crutches.” Lea’s smiling so wide, Dianna finds herself smiling back even if it still hurts.

“Done.” The two of them share a laugh, something that they haven’t done in quite some time.

“How are you?” Dianna smiles a little.

“I’m all right. How are you?”

“I’m sorry.”

Dianna shakes her head, not wanting to go through this again. At least not right now. “Don’t be, okay?”

Lea’s about to say something when Cory beckons for her from the other side of the set. She looks at Dianna and she looks at him trying to find the words to say.

“You should go, he’s waiting for you.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Lea gets up from her seat beside Dianna and quickly walks over to Cory. When she gets there, she looks back at Dianna who hasn’t moved from her spot, having seen the entire thing play in front of her.

When Lea and Cory hold hands while they’re speaking to the director, Dianna takes that as her cue to leave. She starts walking away, determined not to look back. But she can feel someone looking at her. She knows who it is because no one has ever looked at her like Lea looks at her.

She knows she probably shouldn’t, but Dianna turns around anyway and meets Lea’s gaze who offers a dimpled smile and a small wave.

Dianna tells herself that  _she can’t love Lea_ , but she does so anyway.


End file.
